Bruce Ely/The OregonianMike BellottiLOS ANGELES - With judgment day looming for the Oregon football team, athletic director Mike Bellotti and coach Chip Kelly were drawing lines Thursday for how to handle the discipline that will follow LaMichael James' expected plea deal in a domestic violence case and Jeremiah Masoli's arraignment on a second-degree burglary charge.

Bellotti said the distinctions would be between charges and convictions, and between misdemeanors and felonies. A felony conviction would result in dismissal from the team and loss of scholarship, he said.

That could give some indication of how coach Chip Kelly might levy punishment to his star running back and his star quarterback after Friday's hearings in Lane County Circuit Court. James' case involves misdemeanors. Masoli's involves a felony.

Oregon State's athletic department, prompted by a state senator's 2005 legislation after string of incidents involving Beavers athletes, instituted a discipline policy that removed gray areas such as the ones facing Kelly now.

"You don't wish anything like that on your worst enemy," Beavers coach Mike Riley has said of experiences such as the one unfolding in Eugene, where over the past six weeks nine players have encountered some form of legal trouble.

From late 2004 through much of the following year, more than a dozen OSU football players got in trouble ranging from bar fights to supplying alcohol to minors to trying to pay a cab fare with marijuana.

When an OSU football player punched an off-duty Oregon Army National Guardsman at the now-closed Headline Café in Corvallis, Riley's program came under intense scrutiny.

There was a nationally publicized incident where one of the team's best players on defense was charged with drunken driving and "kidnapping" a ram sheep.

At least one player was booted off the team for felony assault.

Before the team's 2005 season opener, an 18-year-old man -- an OSU player's best friend from high school -- died of alcohol poisoning in a university dorm room and three players were charged with supplying alcohol to a minor. That prompted Riley -- who had been criticized for being too lenient with players -- to institute a "one strike and you're out" rule regarding drugs and alcohol.

OSU athletic director Bob De Carolis, who seemingly had a crisis involving the football team on his hands every week, said in exasperation at one point, "It's like a nightmare you never wake up from."

De Carolis promised the school would take action, and in April 2005, in the wake of six OSU football players' arrests in four months, Oregon State came up with a new code of conduct for its student-athletes that mandated minimum punishments for drunken driving, minor in possession of alcohol, drug possession, physical assault and sexual assault.

"The over-riding principle," De Carolis said at the time, "is that in the event of a felony charge a student athlete will be immediately suspended from all athletic activity until the legal process runs its course."

When asked where he draws the line on criminal offenses, Kelly said at felonies and misdemeanors.

But even that approach will have gray areas. Take the case of Masoli. He is charged with a Class C felony but the district attorney may elect to treat it as a Class A misdemeanor.

What then?

Also possible, more evidence could be presented that would remove Masoli from the gray area and perhaps off the team altogether.

DeCarolis once likened his job to that of a parent with 500 kids. Bellotti insists that the vast majority of his kids are well-behaved.

"There are 515 student-athletes in this institution," Bellotti said. "Over 500 of them are doing the right thing every day, but they're all besmirched to a degree, as we are, and it's very frustrating."

For some, situations such as the one OSU surmounted and UO now wrestles with beg this question: Is it inevitable for a college football program lunging for the big time to be tripped up by such off-field issues?

"I don't think it's inevitable once you reach a certain level because we've been beyond the level we achieved this year," Bellotti said. "We've been second in the nation, and we didn't have those issues."

Bellotti established a character education system that, among other things brought in police, lawyers, judges and other professionals to lecture Oregon athletes.

Yes, everything with which the players have been charged has been covered.

But as James' and Masoli's hearings Friday demonstrate -- simply by appearing in court, regardless of their cases' outcome -- that doesn't ensure good judgment by every athlete.